Moving dnssd to kdelibs

[Kurt Pfeifle]

-----Original Message-----
From: Friedrich W. H. Kossebau [mailto:Friedrich.W.H at Kossebau.de]
Sent: Wed 12/1/2004 9:08 PM
To: kde-core-devel at kde.org
Subject: Re: Moving dnssd to kdelibs
 
Am Mittwoch, 1. Dezember 2004 20:21, schrieb Aaron Seigo:
> On December 1, 2004 8:53, Jakub Stachowski wrote:
> > - random idea I just got (not even started yet) for easy launching remote
> > apps (not whole session): add new submenu to standard k-menu: 'K ->
>> > Remote application -> (list of hosts) -> (normal k-menu for every host)
>> > '. List of hosts could be populated by searching for _remoteapps._tcp
>> > (advertising location of /usr/share/applications and ssh port) or
>> > something similar.
>>
>> i don't think this would be very efficient, really. a better way might be
>> to add support for mDNS to the FreeNX server and client. this would solve
>> the big issue of how to do automatic discovery for NX on the network. it
>> could also advertise applications that the NX admin has approved for use
>> over the network, and that should be a bit more controllable/efficient.
>>
>> what do you think?

> As FreeNX is not spreaded everywhere today and does not support single 
> applications

Of course it does! Who said otherwise? How come you are repeating an
unsubstantiated statement?

So here is a summary:

 * NX supports full desktops as well as single application windows
   displaying remotely.

 * NX is considerably faster and more responsive in both these 
   profiles (full desktop and single app) than plain vanilla remote
   X, or compressed X, or VNC, or SunRay, or Tarantella -- and it
   has even a slight edge over MS RDP and Citrix.

 * In full desktop mode, NX is even more fast than in single app mode.
   The reason is these: 

    --> single app mode benefits from NX caching and NX compression 
        (which is better than any other known X compression method --
        -- compared to generic ZLIB it is a factor of 10, while 
        consuming only 10% of ZLIB's CPU cycles).

    --> full desktop mode benefits from the same to technologies,
        *plus* the near-complete roundtrip supression. Plain X11 apps
        produce many many roundtrips, making the user experience "slow"
        and unresponsive.

Roundtrip suppression for single app mode is on NoMachine's roadmap 
(and even partially implemented). What it takes is to create a 
"rootless" nxagent (which is derived from Xnest). The current 
nxagent's rootless mode is not yet stable and leads to crashes.

However, even without this feature, NX is still the fastest way to 
display a single app X11 window across a network connection under 
all conditions (its speed is of course more distinct over slow and
latency-ridden links). It certainly is faster than plain X11, than 
DXCP-compressed X11 or gzip-compressed X11 (and it is SSL encrypted). 
And it is stable. 

It is just slower than the same application embedded in a complete 
NX desktop. 

So most people who saw NX as complete remote desktop display or 
Desktop Terminal Server application, tend to be a bit disappointed 
when they try the single window mode (after all, it saves real 
estate on the screen, no?) and think this is all NX can do.

The single app speedup by bringing roundtrip suppression to that 
mode will surely come sometime in the future.

IIRC, NoMachine even have recently even offered a "bounty program" 
for people who are interested in developing this as OpenSource/GPL 
(they seem to have not enough time for this currently, and as you 
know yourself, real X11 experts who know what they are doing are 
very few on this planet).

I hope this clears up the fog around the topic.

A different question is about *kNX*. kNX may have a few bugs regarding
single app mode for NX sessions, and definitely has many missing
features. For those who don't know: kNX is the KDE NX Client hosted in
kdenonbeta, created during last LinuxTag more or less as a "proof of
concept". 

Hopefully this will soon become a shiny little gem on the KDE desktop. 
Currently it isn't. It is the result of a quick (but brilliant) hack 
over 2 days in last June. Unfortunately jowenn didnt have any time to 
devote to it due to his university obligation.

> (or is this in the stable release meanwhile?) such a simple 
> support for launching single remote application via traditionell 
> X might be very welcome by some. Promoting FreeNX next to it is of 
> course a good idea, too :)
>
> Friedrich

Cheers,
Kurt

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